Police in the city issued the warning after finding advanced skimming equipment in the store. The fraudsters are believed to have succeeded in obtaining PIN numbers and card numbers.
“Anyone who paid with a card in the store in the weeks leading up to December 3rd should cancel their card,” police spokesman Magnus Fornell told newspaper Sydsvenskan.
Police said the alterations made to the pay terminal were almost impossible to detect with the untrained eye. Bank card information was saved on a memory card and sent to the fraudsters via a wireless network.
Fornell said he believed the information gleaned from the cards was later sold on the internet. A number of cases had already emerged in which Malmö Toys R Us customers had their cards charged from various locations in Italy, he said.
Fornell said the operation was most likely carried out by a criminal network from Romania.